Queen of Kings (13 page)

She eased herself up from the slab, naked and exultant. Whatever it meant, whatever it would mean, she was free.

 

 

I
t was a simple matter to leave the mausoleum, pressing the stone with her fingers and waiting for the hidden tunnel to the palace to open. How had they imagined she'd gotten into the place to begin with? All the tombs were connected to the palaces, and had been for centuries.

She slipped back in through the slave's quarters, taking only the silver box that contained Antony's ashes, wrapped in a cloth to protect her fingers from the strange, scalding pain the metal caused her skin. She hid in a cellar. It was daylight, and she could not go out into the sun, particularly not as she was. She would need dark clothing, and something to swath her face.

She found herself confused, uncertain where to go next, and so she stayed hidden. Her city was a great unknown, though it had always cradled her in the past. She had no servants, no trusted friends, no messengers. She had no dresser, no woman to paint her skin and braid her hair.

She was dead to all of them.

She thought of this with a kind of wonder as she crouched, naked and filthy, against the cool stone wall of the cellar. She was no longer a queen. She could do exactly as she pleased now. No more politics, no more advisors, no more declarations of war.

What was it she wanted? What would she do now that she was dead? She
was
dead, that much was certain. Dead to her country, in any case.

The things she loved had been taken from her, but some of them still lived. Her children. She would find them. Her enemies still lived as well. A whisper of memory came back to her as she thought of Octavian. She saw him as he knelt over her in her bedchamber, thinking her dead, speaking to her as though she could forgive him. He'd confessed his sins to her. He was the one who'd told Antony she was dead. He was the one who had told her armies to desert her husband.

All of this had been set in motion by Octavian's lies.

When she found him, she would hurt him as he had hurt her.

The palace seethed with activity when first she entered, servants running from room to room, the foul scent of roasting meat, excited gossip, but as the day passed, the place quieted. Octavian had left the palaces just before she'd arrived, or so she gleaned from listening to the chatter. He'd taken a mass of his soldiers, bodyguards, and armor, kindling, and firepots, and gone out into the tombs. Starting a tiny war somewhere in her city, she imagined.

When at last she emerged from the cellar, creeping along a kitchen wall, the place was nearly empty. The creature she finally spoke with was ancient, a blind crone hovering over a basin, scrubbing away at some vile root.

“Where are the other servants?” Cleopatra asked her.

“Are you not one of us?” the crone asked.

“I've been away,” Cleopatra said, trying to repress her regal tone. This was not the sort of conversation she would normally have with a slave.

“They've gone to the execution,” the servant said.

This was a stroke of luck, though who might Octavian be killing now? His own soldiers? She would not be surprised by such an act. He
would
kill his trusted allies. Antony had been his friend, his teacher, and look at what he'd done to him.

There was no one left to war against. The city had surrendered. Mark Antony was dead, and so was she, for all Octavian knew. She looked forward to seeing his face when she proved that assumption wrong. Her mouth filled with saliva. Hunger. She still could not remember the last time she'd eaten. Something about the shock of her false burial, she concluded. There were gaps in her memory. It was a blur of light, a glimpse of red that failed to resolve into anything clear.

Cleopatra found a kitchen knife. In the dark, she held out a lock of her hair and sawed it off, shuddering as it drifted to the floor, braided strands and loose ones. A single shining twist of silver. Her hair had been beautiful, and the coif she'd been buried with, dressed by Charmian, was complex, each knot signifying something specific. Those things were gone. She grieved them as much as she gloried in her new state.
Free,
she reminded herself.
Free.

Soon, it was all sheared, cut into a rough tumble, and her head bound up in a swath of dirty cloth. She washed the paints from her face with cold, greasy water. She looked like a slave. None of the assembled would know her for their queen. Still, she would cover herself fully, for though the day was waning, the sun shone low in the sky, and she did not imagine she would be immune to its rays. She wrapped the box containing Antony's ashes in a piece of cloth and slung it over her shoulder before dressing herself in a robe, a pair of leather sandals, and a rough traveling cloak stolen from one of the cook's chambers.

At last, she veiled her head and made her way into the city, following the sounds of reveling.

Her enemy would be at the execution. She looked forward to seeing his face when she appeared before him.

O
ctavian strode onto the platform where the accused awaited him. Cleopatra was the reason for this. The only reason. She'd forced Octavian's hand, and he resented it, but he had to find her.

It had taken only a moment to determine that the queen was gone from her mausoleum. The chain that had bound her draped the pyre like a glittering veil, and the fastenings that had bound the chain itself to the teak were destroyed.

Something, or someone, had clawed the wood away.

As for how she'd escaped the building, he could not tell. Octavian himself, claiming that he sought some forgotten treasure inside the mausoleum, had required stonemasons to break into the covered window at the top of the building, and there was no other way in or out, not that he could see. The witch had spirited herself away.

Well, he would spirit her back.

Somewhere out there, she was watching him. He seethed, despite his dread. He was surrounded by guards, and it would not be he who died today. Marcus Agrippa stood beside him, and though he remained bewildered by the episode in the mausoleum, the general was the most reliable defender a man could ask for.

Octavian caught a glimpse of the criminal's liquid golden eyes, those long limbs beneath the Roman toga, and he feared that he was not making the right decision.

The boy gave him a pleading stare. Octavian turned away and cleared his throat.

“Citizens of Alexandria,” he said, looking down into the wild-eyed crowd. She was not visible, if she was here. “Your emperor addresses you.”

The crowd cheered for him, and though he knew it to be false—they were Egyptians, after all, cheering for a conqueror—it pleased him.

“This man stands accused of treason,” he continued. Treason? He made up the accusation as he said it. “He is Caesarion, son of Cleopatra, who herself conspired against the Roman Empire and against her own people.”

Octavian had sent riders to Koptos and Myos Hormos as soon as Cleopatra revealed where the boy had gone. His messengers caught up with the boy's trusted tutor, Rhodon, at a roadside inn, and as the boy slept, innocent of betrayal, the price for a peaceful delivery had been negotiated. Five days before, even as Cleopatra was being buried in her mausoleum, Caesarion had been delivered back to Alexandria by Rhodon, who was paid a bounty in Egyptian gold for the task.

Octavian had been undecided about what to do with Egypt's heir. He could see his own adoptive father in the shape of the sixteen-year-old's jaw, and it unsettled him.

“How did my mother die?” the boy asked Octavian during dinner the night he arrived, a strong set to his mouth, sitting straight and true in his chair.

“Suicide,” Octavian replied, and the boy nodded bravely, asking no further questions. Octavian straightaway took him out for weapons training, and the boy excelled, his smooth, copper skin shining in the sun, his form perfect. This boy, this Caesarion, was so obviously Julius Caesar's son, Octavian could hardly bear to kill him.

Octavian had slept restlessly, dreaming of taking Caesarion back to Rome and installing him in his own house. His wife, Livia, would protest, of course, but what place did Livia have to protest anything? She'd married him while pregnant with another husband's child, and who would blame him for adopting a male heir when Livia had not provided one for him?
This
boy was Caesar's own blood! Far better than Octavian's stepson, Tiberius, who carried no heroic line in his ancestry. Just as Octavian had been adopted by Julius Caesar, Octavian would adopt Caesarion. It was fitting.

The symmetry had pleased the emperor, and he'd been on the point of announcing his decision when the absence of Cleopatra's body from her mausoleum changed things.

Octavian needed a lure for the queen, and the son must serve. He announced that he'd changed his mind, that Caesarion could not be trusted.

A bewildered Agrippa resisted this sudden shift in Octavian's plans, insisting that if Caesarion had to be executed, it should be done in private. He feared a riot, angry Alexandrians resisting the death of their prince.

Octavian could not bring himself to explain that the execution was a trap for a dead woman.

Where was she? He scanned the crowd again.

Perhaps she'd appear in the final moment. He signaled to his forces to remain on guard. The sun was setting, and he must kill the boy or lose the light. The crowd, whatever their loyalties, desired a death. All this was Cleopatra's fault, and Octavian resented her for it.

He took a deep breath and nodded to his centurion. He would not do this dirty thing himself. The crowd screamed with bloodlust, recognizing the gesture.

“Traitor!” they cried, and pushed closer, some of them attacking each other in their excitement.

His men raised their shields in a ceremonial gesture, and he searched the crowd one last time. No one. Only an old woman wrapped from head to toe in rough veils struck his eye, and she was at the farthest edge of the throng, pushing her way forward. Not the queen.

Octavian glanced toward the boy, questioning his haste in condemning him. Scarcely Cleopatra's son at all. Far more the son of Caesar. He looked toward his advisors, wondering what excuse he could use to render this afternoon forgotten, wondering how he would calm the crowd should he not give them what they expected.

Just then, the boy's eyes blazed open, and he lurched in the grip of the centurion, flinging his arms upward and his body back. He kicked and connected with the older man's leg, and the centurion lost his hold. Caesarion began to run, launching himself off the platform like a gazelle, and even in such dire circumstances, Octavion could only look upon him in wonder.

Here was a warrior. Everyone had seen his bravery. The boy was a credit to his father's country. Octavian moved his hand to call the execution off.

“Pardon him!” he managed, but the noise of the crowd was too loud.

They surged forward, fists in the air, throwing punches and bellowing, surrounding the boy.

“Kill him!” they shouted, and Octavian's centurion, now recovered, leapt off the platform with a roar of fury.

P
eople kicked about Cleopatra, pulling and tugging at her robes. The scent of flesh seared her nostrils. She inhaled deeply, feeling the press of limbs against hers, the weight of bodies. Her fingers curled, hidden beneath her robe. Cleopatra could almost see the emperor, almost see his intended victim, whoever it was. She pushed her way forward, craning her neck for a view.

She hungered, troubled by the gaps in her memory. Surely, she had last eaten weeks ago, before Antony's death. She'd dined with her love, that was it. The night before he died.

But somehow, she was not certain of that. There were flashes in her mind that felt like memory, pale skin, blood trickling.

The last light of the sun shone directly on the shields ahead, reflecting into her eyes. Her wrappings were not enough to keep it from burning. She felt weak, with both hunger and heat, her skin sparking beneath its coverings, her eyes filling. She needed to get out of the light, but there was nowhere to go. She pushed herself deeper into the crowd toward Octavian.

Odd. She caught a glimpse of someone she knew, close to the platform. It couldn't be he, though. Rhodon the tutor was long gone, to Myos Hormos with her son Caesarion. She was mistaken.

Drink,
her body called, urging her onward.

Octavian was somewhere up there, and even if she could not see him, she could smell his strange absence of odor. The smooth grayness of him, like a gap in all the other scents and thoughts. Ahead.

She pressed forward, her mouth filling with saliva.

A shaven-headed centurion appeared on the platform, his short toga newly white. Bleached in urine, and then rinsed in water until it passed for clean. Cleopatra wrinkled her nose, sniffing the foul Roman odor from where she stood, even if no one else in the crowd could smell it. The centurion leapt off the platform in pursuit of the victim, and then, suddenly, through a gap in the crowd, Cleopatra caught a glimpse of her son.

His panicked face, his slender brown limbs scrabbling as he ran from his executioner. Cleopatra staggered with shock even as she shoved herself deeper into the crowd, toward him, toward him. It could not be.

Why had he returned to Alexandria? He'd been safe, taken from the city by Rhodon. How had they found Caesarion? Who had betrayed him? It came to her, in a devastating realization.

She had.

“I am a family man,”
Octavian had sworn, and she'd trusted him, thinking to save her other children, thinking to bargain with a fiend.